Learning from Enthusiasts: From Traveling Documentary Film Festival to International Film and Media Festival
It's Dokfest anniversary. We count the editions, not the years. In 1982, the forerunner of today's "Kassel Documentary Film & Video Festival" debuted. Or rather: A "Traveling Documentary Film Festival" threw films onto the screen of the freshly founded Filmladen that otherwise would not have made it into the cinema. The counter-public movement was also moving Kassel at the time. Social projects and alternative institutions appeared on the scene. The Schluckspecht wine store or the Brotgarten still exist today, as does the Filmladen, the "mother" of the festival.
Both institutions are the work of enthusiastic dilettantes who wanted to do something to counter the mainstream in the cinemas. Teacher trainees, social workers, artists, etc. – none of them had studied film, but they all believed they knew what the audience was missing on the screen. They all focused their professional biographies on the screen and somehow managed – for better or worse – to make a living from it. This accomplishment was only possible because one was constantly willing to adapt. For the cinema, this meant above all offering audiences not only fare but also comfort, fending off the growing competition in the cinema boom of the 1990s, and keeping up with technical developments. And otherwise? The films just had to please an audience. In comparison, the challenges of the festival were even more diverse.
First of all, there were the external circumstances. By the time the decision was made to set up a film program independently after the traveling documentary film festival, which still brought its own program, the topic of money became a constant companion. The printing of an announcement form or a program booklet, the return shipment of a viewing tape or a small subsidy for filmmakers traveling to the festival – everything cost money that had to be procured. Even these "peanuts" show the dilemma of costs increasing with the success of a festival in an almost natural way. Another example? A more extensive program means more staff on the viewing committees, more staff on site, higher costs for renting spaces, and so on. Money is only one example of the many organizational challenges that the festival has to face and that cannot be overcome with idealism alone. In retrospect, the continuous professionalization of the festival is perhaps the greatest achievement of the many organizers of the past years.
The prerequisite for this was that the organizers constantly refined the content of their festival.
After all, a film festival has to constantly prove its relevance: to sponsors, to the media landscape, and to the audience. Thus, the films from the early years were soon complemented by a video section, which was followed by a symposium on Internet topics (at a time when the Internet was still in its infancy). A media art exhibition emancipated itself from the video section and VJ formats enriched the DokfestLounge. After long hesitation, the festival awarded its own prizes, established exchange platforms for films from Hesse such as international partner festivals and educational platforms for schools in Kassel. The online format that was created in 2020 due to the pandemic was retained and permanently expanded the reach and duration of the festival. All these transformations were not possible without new partners. The early days of the festival were characterized by minimal subsidies from the city and proportional budgets from the state, which would not have allowed any further development. The acquisition of European funding in the noughties was an important signal of recognition for the work done.
This and consistent lobbying led to an increase in funding. Through awarding prizes, private-sector partners also became increasingly involved. Today, the festival has a solid financial basis. This is what it needs, because a professional festival must also work with professionals, must be able to pay its overhead costs as well as the members of its viewing committees. This is the basis so that the festival can continue to find its way and move into the future. Because film festivals are still needed. The counter-public of the past has now become a "for the public". This is where media makers meet a real-world audience, where feedback channels and new networks are created, where creative impulses are given and technical innovations are presented, and where the topics of tomorrow are negotiated. A festival is an active process that involves recipients and producers equally. Both value this and both need it. (Wieland Höhne, from 1995 to 2006 staff member of Kassel Dokfest, from 2001 co-festival director)